‘A Benedictine monastery is like an elephant: hard to define, but you’re in no doubt when you encounter one.’ So said a former abbot of Downside when trying to explain to a group of teenage boys what he had given his life to build. The same could probably be said of a classical school in the United States.
According to Forbes in December last year, the US classical education market, once thought to be a homeschool niche, is now worth a whopping $10 billion. The genesis of the movement lies in evangelical Protestantism. Pastor Doug Wilson founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) in 1994. The ACCS was the United States’ first cluster of classical schools, and it remains the largest. However, in the last few years Catholic classical schools have started to boom. A 2024 report by Acadia Education puts Catholic classical schools at 20 per cent of the market. The same report forecasts that by 2035, 2.4 per cent of America’s elementary school children will be attending a classical school.
In a country with every type of education you could want, and some you really wouldn’t, on offer, parents are struggling to trust conventional schooling. Education is a major battleground in the culture wars being waged across our nation, and on Twitter. Both Left and Right claim the other is destroying America’s youth. Meanwhile, parents are simply befuddled that a child can pass every test on their school-issued iPad, while being unable to answer a basic maths question or write their name clearly. There are also the dreaded text messages announcing that your child’s school is ‘on lockdown’.
In Florida, a controversial ‘school choice’ policy gives parents options. If you choose to place your child outside the public system, the state gives their new school a cheque. While opponents of the policy point out that it draws funds from existing schools, many parents are relieved to have the freedom to select an education aligned with their beliefs.
In Orlando, Florida, we have two classical schools founded by Catholics. Highlands Latin School (HLS) and the Chesterton Academy of Orlando (Chesterton) share a building to the north of town. Both schools are less than five years old, both are growing, and both have filled every class easily this year. When you ‘encounter’ them, it is easy to see why.
HLS Orlando is part of a network of classical Christian schools headquartered in Kentucky, with homeschool co-op members as well as full-time establishments. While not an explicitly Catholic school, both the founders, Marie Drury, the principal, and Mary Ann Vernace, the academic dean, are Catholic, as are many of the teachers, and the annual Christmas Cantata closed last year with the Salve Regina. HLS is guided by the mission of providing an education centred on truth, beauty and goodness. This is a lofty ambition for an elementary and middle school. They achieve this by combining academic rigour in the core subjects with classes in violin, art, music and art history – and that is just in first grade. Cursive, which has all but disappeared from the pages of American exercise books, is almost a competitive sport at HLS. In second grade, Latin is added. Rigour is real. By second grade, pupils do a daily maths drill of 200 questions in under 10 minutes. This does not, though, mean that every pupil is expected to be an academic superstar. As a new parent, you are introduced quickly to two concepts: the mantra ‘we can do hard things’, useful during homework time, and the idea that a C is a passing grade, while an A is exceptional and not to be expected for every exercise. The school leadership clearly want nothing more or less than each child to fulfil their true potential. During the annual Christmas Cantata, each grade takes the stage and the programme might include Rutter, Fauré and plainchant, with carols in several languages.
Sharing the same corridors and chapel with HLS is the Chesterton Academy of Orlando, a Catholic classical school founded in 2022. Named for the former Catholic Herald contributor, the Orlando school is part of a global network of 70 Chesterton schools. They expect to grow to 150 schools by 2030 and 1,500 by 2040. The curriculum at Chesterton is broad and rich. For each year, classes include literature, history, philosophy, theology, language, rhetoric, maths, science, music, art, drama and PE. As at HLS, you are either in or not: everyone learns it all. Pupils must also perform in a play and sing in a choir. Teaching is in the Socratic style, with desks arranged in a square in every classroom. Debate is encouraged. The school also has a rich prayer life, with Mass on Tuesday (Novus Ordo) and Wednesday (Ordinariate or EF), and the Divine Office on other days. There is also First Friday Mass. Their first vocation for the Diocese of Orlando was a member of the inaugural class, David Ewing, who headed off to minor seminary in 2025.
Brandon Vogt, the charming and relentlessly cheerful Chesterton Academy of Orlando founder, also publishing director for Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire, believes the growth in Catholic classical education can be summarised by the great man himself:
‘GK Chesterton wrote that children today are subjected to educational philosophies younger than themselves. I think during the Covid-19 period, many parents discovered how unfitting these methods were – the books, the screens, the politicising of curriculum. They want their children formed into good, thoughtful, articulate young men and women, and have found the classical method does that.’
To anyone who more than three decades ago spent time in the draughty stone corridors of an English Benedictine or Jesuit school, this form of education would not seem revolutionary. Rather, it would feel familiar. It is an education that Guy Crouchback, Bridey or Father Brown would recognise. However, here in Florida, school choice means that a classical education is not the privilege of a small elite, but is open to all. While many of the institutions we grew up with have fallen victim to an obsession with ‘league tables’ and ‘delivering outcomes’, these two schools are focused on moulding joyful, intelligent, future saints. Hearing tales about Mrs Drury’s contraband pile – toys are not allowed in your rucksack, nor branded items; books are encouraged – that is most definitely a work in progress. In fact, joy is something the leaders of both schools take incredibly seriously. For example, at HLS, the incentive for each pupil exceeding not a financial goal, but a reading goal, for the annual read-a-thon is a visit by the local ice cream truck.
And as for ‘outcomes’, is seminary the only option? No. The products of Catholic classical schools, like their parents, go on to many and various careers. In the age of AI, as a tech executive, my bet is that the most valuable educational commodity will soon be the ability to reason with a strong grounding in logic. In fact, despite these schools having a mostly tech-free curriculum, a focus on the classics and philosophy might also end up being these children’s competitive advantage in the AI-era workforce.
